Monday, June 27, 2016

Lesbians are rare

That female sexuality is more malleable than male sexuality is, that women are more likely to 'experiment' with same-sex intimacy (the majority of whom still identify as heterosexual after having done so) than men are, and that men who self-identify as bisexual tend to really just be homosexuals who don't want to come all the way out of the closet are all ideas I'm familiar with and assume to be generally correct.

The GSS, which began explicitly asking about sexual orientation in 2008, provides some relevant data.

That data appears to prove Milo correct. While 65.6% of self-identified gay men say they have never had a female sexual partner, only 33.9% of lesbians say they have never had a male sexual partner.

Additionally, women are twice as likely to identify as bisexual as men are while also being about one-third less likely to identify as lesbian as men are to identify as gay (rather than bisexual). If non-heterosexual men and women were, in practice, exclusively homosexual and bisexual at equal rates, we'd expect the fact that women are more likely to identify as bisexual and men more likely to identify as gay to mean that, among those women who did identify as lesbian, exclusive homosexuality would be even more pronounced than it is among gay men. That, however, is not the case.

At a minimum, gay men are twice as likely to be exclusively gay as gay women are, and the true multiple is probably even higher than that.

This is one of those area where the facts immediately make sense to someone hearing them for the first time. Anyone who has been in an American college over the last 30 years knows the expression "Lesbian Until Graduation." In my college days, I knew several girls who were lesbians for a year or so during their sophomore/junior years. Senior year they found boyfriends who they hoped to marry and that was the end of their lesbianism.

People with teenage daughters will tell you that a new fad with some girls is a sort pseudo-lesbianism where they adopt the uniform and the man-hating, but are not fully committed to being lesbian. That's not something you see with males. You'll also note that young females are the point of the spear when it comes to the fluid sexuality stuff.

Revisiting that post, I see that the rates of self-reported exclusive homosexuality mesh pretty well with what the GSS shows. It slipped my mind that you'd written about it so extensively. I should have revisited it prior to this but fortunately this post is complementary or at least supplementary rather than just being an echo.

Z,

That's a perfect segue into looking at what percentage of men and women who've had same-sex intimate experiences consider themselves homosexual or bisexual. The GSS, with three pretty distinct categories--gay, bisexual, or heterosexual--show a much higher heterosexual result than the data Jayman showed, which was on a more fluid scale (i.e., "mostly heterosexual", etc).

There are countless social pressures on lesbians to as Milo says Get a dicking. Having intercourse with a man is not the same as wanting sex with a man. Not in the case of rape alone, also because that is what is "supposed" to be done.

The pressure on gay men to act straight has to be higher than it is on lesbians to act straight. When people say they find homosexuality disgusting, immoral, etc they're primarily talking about male homosexuality. Lesbianism doesn't elicit the same kind of visceral response (or it elicits a different kind of visceral response for a lot of people...).

There is an enormous gap between how society views lesbianism versus male homosexuality. Heterosexual males are generally revolted by male homosexuality, while generally favorable toward lesbianism. Go into a strip club and this is blazingly obvious. As a result, heterosexual females are much more accepting of lesbianism than they are of male homosexuality. Girls tend to like, or at least pretend to tolerate, when males like.

As an aside, it is why "coming out of the closet" was a bad move for gays in the long run. at some point, the Left will no longer have a need for the gays and toss them from the coalition. Within a decade, Muslims will be a bigger demo for the coalition of fringes and the Muslims will demand the gays be tossed. Orlando was the shape of things to come.

Right. Gays, especially as homosexuality becomes increasingly normalized, are going to become like left-handers except only one-fourth as numerous. Because there's no other demographic unity, lefties aren't a protected group even though we do have genuine issues of social convenience (golf clubs, baseball gloves, notebooks, driving, etc).

There is no reason for gays to retain a privileged status. Milo thinks they're already starting to realize that. Even though it doesn't seem to show up in the data yet, here's to hoping he's correct.

I believe the evidence would show human sexuality is very malleable early and crystallizes toward adulthood.

Those who have been sexually abused by homosexual men as boys have very high rates of homosexuality themselves. People have all kinds of fetishes, from pantyhose fetishes to schoolgirl fetishes that could never be innate but could be very well due in part to imprinting.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imprinting_(psychology)

That imprinting has a major role in sexuality is extremely obvious to me. Sadly, we live in a dark ages where almost nobody with a scientific title has anything to do with the pursuit of actual truth or has any interest in understanding the world as it is.

It would make sense that imprinting is stronger for men and mens' sexuality crystallizes more firmly, since mens' sexuality is stronger.

Interesting, a potential explanation that squares the circle regarding homosexuality neither being genetic/inborn nor a 'choice'/something that is malleable once a person becomes aware of it.

How does pederasty fit into that explanation (the male desire for it)? In ancient Greece it could conceivably roll down hill generationally among the upper classes, but what about now, where it is mostly frowned on but still obviously desired by some? Does their exposure to deviancy tell the whole story?

I think the imprinting theory for orientation (not for something ancillary like fetishes or some other sexual preference) is probably wrong.

The reason that boys who have been sexually abused by men are more likely to grow up to be homosexual is because male abusers look for boys who are more likely to be homosexual in orientation in the first place. (Male homosexuals, including myself, almost always report having homosexual feelings very early on... even pre-puberty.) Not only is the abused boy more likely to have conflicted, ambiguous feelings about the abuse (and not report it or resist it), but male homosexual boys are generally more feminine and less aggressive (and will also be less likely to resist).

I realize this sounds like victim blaming, but you aren't leftists so you shouldn't care!

I've become pretty convinced by the pathogen theory for male homosexuality (but I am not a scientist), although I think it's probably an autoimmune response to a pathogen, not the pathogen itself. Or maybe an autoimmune response to... VACCINES!

I wonder if there are multiple causes, however, since most, but not all, male homosexuals are at least more feminine than the average male. Is it the same mechanism at work with the non-feminine male homosexuals?

And I guess I have the same question about female homosexuality, since there is definitely a (smaller) population of female homosexuals who are clearly more masculine than average (and in fact this population is being pressured in the current LGBT political climate to "transition" and to become "trans men").

Imprinting is certainly part of the sexuality picture. How else can someone develop certain unusual fetishes (I mentioned schoolgirl outfits and pantyhose as two very common ones). Obviously those predilections come from exposure and could not be innate.

Humans are different from other animals in that we have much less instinct and much more imprinting and hardening of neural pathways over time. The tremendous profusion of sexual predilections (hundreds? thousands?) cannot possibly be innate but it could very reasonably be due to early exposure at crucial stages of childhood.

You argue that homosexuality is hardwired, and I agree. That is how imprinting works! But not before birth. Almost nothing in the brain is hardwired before birth in humans beyond some basic reflexes (e.g. breathing, sucking).

The pathogen theory of homosexuality is very unlikely to be correct. There is just no evidence for it, and I have read Cochran extensively on it. And its not for lack of looking. The bodies of homosexual men been have been studied for pathogens in a tremendous way (many billions of dollars, thousands of researchers) in the effort to find and explain HIV and no traces of Cochran's supposed pathogen were found. This theory has zero support in the academic community outside of Greg Cochran, who himself has never experimentally investigated this question.

But the pathogen theory has explanatory power because homosexuality seems to cluster and group in ways that are not random. But imprinting explains this too. An unusual percentage of men who attended elite boarding schools in the UK ended up homosexual. Pathogen? No, imprinting!

"How does pederasty fit into that explanation (the male desire for it)? In ancient Greece it could conceivably roll down hill generationally among the upper classes, but what about now, where it is mostly frowned on but still obviously desired by some? Does their exposure to deviancy tell the whole story?"

The thing about imprinting is that doesn't have to mean anything deviant actually happens. My elementary school was next to a Catholic school where pretty girls went every day in their uniforms. I never so much as touched them but neural pathways were forming and to this day a woman in a neat uniform involving a skirt turns my head. I have sometimes demanded that my wife keep a skirt on during our play time and then I am delirious. TMI, I know, but all in the name of science!

Considering all the opportunities that naturally exist for people to 'imprint' on children, I am just glad it doesn't happen more often than it does.

Culture is very, very important in humans because our brains are so plastic. But the plasticity of the brain and subsequent hardening of pathways is never studied. None of those "I heart science" idiots have any interest. It is much easier to just say "science!" without actually doing any.

"It commonly occurs in falconry birds reared from hatching by humans. Such birds are called "imprints" in falconry. When an imprint must be bred from, the breeder lets the male bird copulate with his head while he is wearing a special hat with pockets on to catch the male bird's semen. "

Animal breeders knew more about sexuality than all the 'experts' who study sexuality in all the renown universities. That is because we live in an era where intellectual inferiority is prized above all else.

How exactly would this "imprinting" in humans work for (male) homosexuality? Molestation? Only a tiny fraction of homosexual males have been molested as children. (I certainly wasn't.) Exposure to depictions of male homosexuality? Such depictions were extremely rare until the mid-90s and wouldn't explain many male homosexuals over age 30... I certainly didn't see anything until long after I was aware of my homosexual orientation (I think I saw two men kiss on "20/20" when I was 16, and I was shocked). Being raised by a same-sex couple? I have met hundreds of male homosexuals and none of them had that upbringing (I was raised by a loving and normal heterosexual couple who were my biological parents, i.e., I was raised by my mother and father.) Maybe if a boy sees another shirtless male when he's a baby that will turn him gay?

Freud's overbearing mother and distant father is more plausible than all of this.

Male homosexuality is maladaptive from an evolutionary perspective. It is highly unlikely that something very normal and common that could happen in someone's upbringing -- mother dying, father dying, lots of sisters, lack of male friends (as opposed to something extremely unprecedented in the history of a species, like a falcon being raised by a human) -- would trigger such a maladaptive condition.

If a human being is raised by robots and isolated from other humans, then, yes, that might affect his psycho-sexual development.

The pathogen theory is still plausible but it is unlikely in my opinion to be some specific pathogen that you can find in the body of an adult. I think it is more likely an autoimmune over-response to a pathogen in childhood. It could be any number of different pathogens that trigger the same response. It could be similar to Type-1 Diabetes, also an extremely maladaptive condition.

I'm highly skeptical of the imprinting argument on math grounds. The incidence of homosexuality appears to steady over time, place and culture. That's why it was assumed to be genetic initially. Blacks have a higher frequency of homosexuality than other groups, but it is higher everywhere.

If that answer was as suggested by imprinting, we would see wildly fluctuating levels of homosexuality in the human populations. We know, for example, that male abusers of children don't just stop at one. They have dozens of victims. If those victims then go onto to be abusers of children, it's not hard to see how the number of homosexuals would grow geometrically.

Ullastret is probably correct that it is the result of a number of factors that come together at about 3% of the time. My guess here is the place to look would be in the womb. A hormonal cocktail of a particular sort results in brain development slightly different from heterosexual males.

Maybe there is literature on it, but I've always wondered why science has not looked for other genetic/behavior/physiological/cognitive commonalities between homosexuals. Homosexuality may be a consequence of something else, like sickle cell is the result of resistance to malaria.

Hah! Were that true, it'd be combated with even more sound and fury than racial differences in IQ!

Dan,

In the case of siblings raised together in functional family units, what causes homosexuality to imprint in one brother but not another? Incidentally coming across homosexuals or a depiction of homosexuality? At what age, roughly, does it tend to happen?

I've always wondered why science has not looked for other genetic/behavior/physiological/cognitive commonalities between homosexuals. Homosexuality may be a consequence of something else, like sickle cell is the result of resistance to malaria.

Indeed. That ship may have sailed now that gays are sacred. Then again they may not always be.

Based on pretty extensive observation, I would say that male homosexuals are (in general) feminized in their mannerisms and interests, but sexually oriented like other males -- very receptive to visual stimuli and as promiscuous as normal men would be if they could; that is, extremely promiscuous (in general).

I read somewhere that feminine boys like to play with Barbies but not with baby dolls. That would be a very interesting area of study.

Homosexuals -- both male and female, so that messes up some of these theories -- report higher levels of various mental health issues. Either it really is because of the stress of growing up in societies hostile (until now) to their orientations (or maybe just realizing that they are built out of sync with nature), or else there is some other mechanism that causes the mental health issues.

I think the genetics people have discarded most of the genetics theories (obviously even receptivity to a pathogen has a genetic component) like the "hot sister gene" theory for male homosexuality, and certainly the "doting gay uncle" theory, which is clearly crap.

" The incidence of homosexuality appears to steady over time, place and culture. "

Nonsense. You had extraordinarily high rates of homosexuality in ancient Greece. There are extraordinarily high rates among the incarcerated (but not among the military, another, until recently, all-male environment). Recently, there were extraordinarily high rates among the English upper classes.

The incidence of homosexuality is not even constant among different cohorts (age groups) in America. For example, after the AIDS scare in the 1990s it went down and after all the pro-gay propaganda it went up again in recent years.

"In the case of siblings raised together in functional family units, what causes homosexuality to imprint in one brother but not another? Incidentally coming across homosexuals or a depiction of homosexuality? At what age, roughly, does it tend to happen?"

Hard to say, and unknowable without study, of which there is none. Imprinting is not a narrow answer but a broad one. It is basically saying there is an innate sexuality but it is somewhat soft and plastic during early development. Experiences matter, and then it crystalizes. This should be the default, baseline hypothesis because that is how the brain seems to work in many other areas (e.g. language -- people have innate language parts of their brain but how their language develops is related to environment). It is absurd that some posit that learning environment would not matter for sexuality when it matters for every other part of brain development.

Your analysis of the promiscuity thing is correct, I think. Homosexual males are often extremely promiscuous. Not all, but I would say most (obviously it depends upon a few other factors). Attractive young gay guys in big cities obviously have the most opportunity. I saw some ridiculous article using data from some non-gay-oriented dating site claiming that gay men only had 3 total sexual partners (granted the people in the sample were young-ish). I knew guys back in my 20s who had already had well over 100 (in their 20s).

No offense, but I think this imprinting theory is nonsense, although I don't have a good explanation for Ancient Greek pederasty.

If innateness or in-utero germ theory were correct one would expect identical twins to have the same sexuality almost always, because they have the same DNA and almost the same environment in childhood. The utero environment is the same and certainly the same in terms of germ exposure.

Instead:

"A significant twin study among adolescents shows an even weaker genetic correlation. In 2002 Bearman and Brueckner studied tens of thousands of adolescent students in the U.S. The same-sex attraction concordance between identical twins was only 7.7% for males and 5.3% for females—lower than the 11% and 14% in the Australian study by Bailey et al conducted in 2000."

People don't want to believe that learning and imprinting and exposures can have such a large role for emotional reasons. But DNA and environment are the only non-metaphysical explanations available, and if twin studies say it is not DNA, then what is left?

The alternative is to posit metaphysical causes, such as spirit possession in one twin and not the other. That would have better explanatory power than the pathetically weak drivel shoved down our throats by our stupid overlords.

The concordance in identical twins for Type 1 diabetes is only 50%. And that is a much simpler process than rewiring the human brain. Is that from imprinting too? Maybe looking at a doughnut for too long?

I was notably more feminine than other boys by at least age 4. I remember same-sex attraction (in the vague, pre-pubescent form) from around 5 or 6.

What is your theory about what I was imprinted by? Did I have some particularly sexy uncle? I was not raised by homosexuals. I did not grow up in San Francisco or any other large city full of homosexuals.

My partner grew up among conservative (not Catholic) religious fanatics and was also never molested.

An auto-immune reaction to a childhood infection seems quite plausible to me. These reactions can cause narcolepsy; I don't see why they can't cause homosexuality.

let's do an experiment with Audacious. You will live in a city where 80% of people are liberals who hate racists. You will live the rest of your life. Imagine yourself in a medium-sized city, in which all are all the time talking about rape culture, we are all equal, whites are guilty, etc ...

So over time they will realize that you do not like black people and start making comments about you in the streets near you, comment on you, often without knowing who you are, who hate racist people that they are sick, that need to be treated. They make jokes about racist people, say they have low IQ, that poverty has made them so. From school to adult life, you live in a hostile environment where you can not be yourself, openly say what you think. If you are cynical, ok, you will get.

Of course, there are different types of people. There are those who can support this type of micro-hostilities, like being a Jew in colonial Brazil, hiding their 'religion' '.

There are those that are less resistant. You have people who are more reactive, the most sensitive.

less masculine men, who are more psychologically androgynous, tend to think like women and do also dislike to be treated in a hostile manner. As women they are good to find incongruities about the treatment they receive from others. As women they tend to be more narcissistic and so often any more harsh criticism may have a negative effect. Women internalize other people's opinions, more than men, who are better ''protected''. Homosexuals also. But in other hand women are more peaceful and probably some subtypes of homosexuals exactly because this higher propensity to internalize other people's opinions.

I believe that an average man, that is, with a common psychological profile, which is exposed from an early age to a hostile environment, internal and constantly realized, will become more withdrawn, depressed and super-sensitive than if exposed to an environment friendly. But i can be wrong.

Yes, we are all born with a disposition to certain behavior but the environment can play a role to increase their frequency or intensity, that is, take us to Certain path.

behavioral traits are frequencies, not traits, what does this mean in the real world, we inherited reactive potentials or frequencies (frequential potentials).

For example, in the case of sexuality, we inherited or reactive potential or frequencies. Do you have a graduallity, as was thought by sexologist Alfred Kinsey. Kinsey proposed and I believe, correctly, a gradualness of POTENTIAL, rather than results, because the results are suspended in space and time.

In fact, the exclusive homossexual to the exclusive heterossexual we have a long spectrum that will not show evident visibly. These variations of behavioral extremes to another are psychological microscopic noises. They can not be seen with the naked eye because it depends on the environment but it exist.

'The behavioral trait' is like a frequency. We '' inherited '' (or a better name for it if we are not clones of our parents but recombinant) A frequential potential that interacts with environmental circumstances, of course, with the people in charge, making decisions that we think is the most applicable even in childhood.

This is called self-will. We can not make decisions that are out of our possibilities. But we can micro-adjust them or be forced to micro-adapt.

As the left-handedness that a few years ago was a minority because most left-handed children were forced to use the right hand, homosexuality seems to be similar (if they are already mutually correlative the biological level).